


That Which Waits

by BugTongue



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Academia, Drowning, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Horror, M/M, MCD Because Of The Ghost Only, Marriage As A Curse (Laugh Track), Southern Gothic, Unhappy Ending, hxhbb, hxhbb2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25006300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BugTongue/pseuds/BugTongue
Summary: Kurapika returns to his family home after years of recovering from the gory, unexplainable death of his extended family. As he prepares for a brand new teaching position, the first one he's gotten since post-grad, his house begins to grow sentient shadows that make sleep almost impossible.Something has gone awry in the spring-pocked forest of Ocala, something atrocious, and just like the spring spits forth it's forgotten aquifer so too does the mud release its memories.
Relationships: Kurapika & Leorio Paladiknight, Kuroro Lucifer | Chrollo Lucifer/Kurapika
Comments: 38
Kudos: 53
Collections: Hxhbb





	1. Condensation

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kinsdura and Lances for beta reading and helping me come up with smaller details to flesh out my skeletal idea. I am not a verbose writer, I must look to those who are lmao.
> 
> Enjoy your spooky summer reading, folks.
> 
> Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6lUTNYr1ySUOMsatPAX4RZ
> 
> [EDIT] THANK YOU so much to Kinsdura and Endly for your beautiful artworks! I have set them at the very beginning as well as the very end to function as front and back covers to my novella length fanfic. I cannot express enough joy or gratitude, honestly. I would print these out and eat them if I could.

_"Where’s that horse you rode in on?_

_Where’s that fair-faced young man?_

_You carried their dead weight and let it fall by the wayside_

_And buried those years one dark evening"_

_(-Bowerbirds, "Walk The Furrows")_

_(Cover art by Kinsdura:<https://kinsdura.tumblr.com/post/622398950283083777> )_

_\---_

The heat was the more oppressive aspect of Kurapika’s return home, he thought, rather than the snapshot polaroids of the crime scene it used to be. Two stories tall plus a nearly useless attic crawlspace, the house had once been white but now stood listing to the side nearly condemned in flaking algae greens and grey where the wood didn’t show through. It was home as he knew it nonetheless. Sitting cross legged on the hood of his car meant the heat bore down on him from between thick oak branches hung heavy with Spanish moss.

Tank top weather in March. He pushed his hair out of his eyes where it was beginning to stick to his skin and peeled himself off the hood in order to drag his belongings in through the obnoxiously loud front door. A trumpet to herald his arrival, he supposed.

The echo of excited footsteps gave him pause. Ticka-tacka ticka-tacka, small feet somewhere on the second story, in one of the rooms. Surely it was the sound of mice rummaging through their nests, oblivious to their impending doom. Mice and nothing more. Even with that likelihood in his mind he was brought back to a time the footsteps would have been better explained by the mischief of children and not rats. Him and the other children of the house skittering through the rooms in games of war and make believe.

The sound of small claws on wood grew louder as he ascended the staircase. One bag at a time was of course for those less insistent on making fewer trips and anyone who refrained from proving to their mothers they were strong enough to carry every grocery bag. Kurapika was over encumbered by four of his bags but had to leave the boxes behind for now, still, it was difficult like this to remain upright. It was especially difficult when his vision upon reaching the top of the stairs was filled with black feathers and the scent of mold.

A crow chastised him for intruding, staying near his head to pluck blond hairs from his head and snap its beak well too near his eyes. He flipped his hair, blew at it, and shouted in reply before dropping three of four bags and chasing the creature through the open door of a bedroom. Rushing past the threshold seemed to flip a switch; day became night, hot air dripped with humidity, the bird was gone and the window hung open to reveal nothing but waving moss and bright stars.

Kurapika peered out into the yard hopeful for something to make sense of the sudden shift in time. Nothing presented itself.

This was… Highly disturbing. It was something he simply could not wrap his mind around. Had he really lost entire hours just staring into space, or had he done something in that time and couldn’t recall any of the details? He wished to put it out of mind but it continued to fester in his skull, the missing hours that for some reason no longer belonged to him.

He felt his way into the hall and grabbed his bags off the floor to pull them into the room least reclaimed by nature. In the sudden darkness he had to walk slow and let his palms and fingertips slide across walls he knew to be almost uselessly thin, deposit his bags, then return ever so carefully downstairs to retrieve his collection of candles from the box nearest the landing. Kurapika thought he must have stood in one place until the sun set, for a profound exhaustion was gnawing at him as his fingers fumbled for tallow and wax. It ate into his wrists, up through his blood to sit heavily behind two eyes. If his body had its way he would curl down over this box and call it a night.

A glance to the glowing lines of his watch showed him he had not merely lost the afternoon, but half of his nighttime hours as well. It was the middle of the night. How could it be the middle of the night? He ground his teeth and heaved to his feet to reclaim the bed of his chosen room, and decided this was something he would have to deal with when morning light arose.

***

Soft yellow light broke sweet upon his face in through the broken glass of the eastern window. Early, yes, but welcome after a night of immemorable dreams that drenched him in sweat and left him as tired as when he went to bed. A rough first night in a place fraught with too much history was nothing to worry about, ignoring the strange loss of time from the previous day.

Kurapika eased his protesting body out of bed and dressed, ready to familiarize himself with the campus and faculty as well as send out any last minute syllabus changes to his students before classes began. A plaid button up in warm and neutral tones that he’d had for only a week, and a denim sherpa he’d had for much longer. He may not be the peak of fashion, but he wore comfortable clothes that he wouldn’t get flack for wearing in a professional setting.

There was no birdsong as he stepped foot onto the front porch. He could hear the wind in the oaks and cypress, the sound of the river off a short walk through the palmettos, but no hint of wild birds. It felt wrong, certainly he couldn't remember this aspect from his childhood. The walk to the car was short but kept the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as he wondered if it might be a bobcat or panther in the area that sent the place silent. He shut the door and sat at the wheel for a moment without turning it on, already feeling sweat form under his collar. With a turn of the key, the car came to life and the sound of his AC drowned out the lack of other ambient noise.

He pressed his forehead to the wheel and pulled himself together. One breath. Two. Alright. He lifted his head and felt his shoulder blades lock up and slam against the car seat as black feathers once again covered his vision. This time, however, they were scattered loose across his windshield as though dumped from a pillow. He looked for blood, but none presented itself.

“Ah, oh mother still my heart.” This felt like the kind of hazing one should receive in a dorm room, not that he’d had to deal much with that behavior. Kurapika had always asked for a private room, and a quick search of his name through the local papers gave the request the weight it needed.

Was this more PTSD? This seemed too real and lingered too long for a hallucination. In fact it was far more real than the fit he’d had the night before. He wiped a hand over his damp face and scoffed, backing the car out of his driveway and crawling out along the grey sand road towards town.

\---

It was a long drive to campus, roughly an hour from his home in the absolute middle of the Ocala National Forest. He listened to the sound of the air conditioner until he felt brave enough to roll down his window and see if this side of the forest had woken up yet. Black feathers still fluttered from where they were stuck between the windshield wipers, but the majority had sloughed off as he rolled out of view of his house. Here, thankfully, the birds were far more talkative.

Tension faded from his limbs until he finally let the events of the past 18 hours leave his thoughts, which now filled up with the names of his coworkers and the lesson plan he was putting the finishing touches on even still--and if he had his way, would continue perfecting until he had to actually use it.

The passing birdsong changed as the road noise increased, quaker parrots and stray gulls joined the crows and mockingbirds. The wind carried the scent of motor oil combined with cigarettes and roadkill until finally he rolled the window up and resorted to the local radio stations. The nearer to the campus he got, the better the choices. He settled on a station playing the dulcet tones of James Blunt and felt the last bit of tension leave his abdomen despite the increasing traffic, his eyes on the road but his mind wandering.

\---

Palm trees, concrete, and grass that took more money in the form of a sprinkler system than he was going to get this year as income. The campus was clean and artificially welcoming in a way he could appreciate; everyone here was focused only on where they would be going next. A sort of interim. He carried two boxes and his laptop bag to his office and left them on the desk to get coffee from the teacher's lounge. Movement caught his eye, and he turned his head only enough to see who it was as he poured a third creamer into his cup.

Kurapika recognized him from the faculty meeting a week ago, when he'd agreed to take the job and subsequently move nearby. Surly face that seemed to be his resting expression, a suit too thin and too tight to be anything but ridiculous, and ratty flip flops that had surely seen better days. He made eye contact with Kurapika at the coffee station as he approached, styrofoam cup in hand. “Yick, that much cream and sugar would kill me.”

“That’s pretty rude for an introduction, and I don’t recall asking.” He took a sip from his nearly overflowing cup to keep it from spilling when he took it back to his office. The acquiescent nod was enough to make him reconsider, but not enough to choose the option of staying. He nodded towards the door and allowed the man to follow him out. "Not that you need much introduction, do you Dr. Paladiknight?"

"I'll admit, a lot of people recognize me, sure, but I'd like to hope you know me from publications and not viral videos." Paladiknight scratched the back of his neck, still holding the bitten, empty cup in a hand that dwarfed it comically.

"Rest easy, I'll be attending a seminar before classes start so I won't have to ask my students how to use a web search. Whatever tape you made it onto has yet to grace my eyes." He pushed open the door to his office and kept his flinch to a minimum at the sight of a single black feather atop his bag. With a flourish just short of aggressive, he brushed it into the trash bin. "As a point of fact," his tone was brisk as he turned to put the desk at his lower back, ignoring the concerned furrow to Paladiknight's brow. "I have read one of your publications after a sterling recommendation in Time."

"Ah, oh Christ you're kidding. That stupid thing is all about my personal life, they hardly even go into detail on what I've been theorizing." Finally, he crushed the cup and tossed it into the bin with the feather. Kurapika sipped his drink and wished he could say if the pull on his lips was for a grimace or a smirk.

"Ruins to riches always makes one a public darling."

"It's gossip. How about I take you for a drink sometime and we can talk about hypercooled gases and superatoms. And uh," he leaned back through the doorway to read the placard and this time Kurapika did smirk. "That's so nonspecific, damn. Shot in the dark, timeline for when erectus showed up?"

"That's a bit antiquated for my taste. If I agree to drinks, we can talk about my studies from last summer on the Anasazi." Kurapika set his cup down on the desk and checked his watch. "But not now, in fact if you're still here in thirty seconds I will consider you a volunteer for rearranging my office."

Dr. Paladiknight gave him a jaunty salute, and took his leave well before the thirty second mark.

\---

On the property back behind the house, further into the weeds, lay the family cemetery. Slabs of limestone with no names and no dates carved in to mark the graves, only snail shell spirals set into the center of each stone. Time would erode the stone and erase the symbols just as it would take their flower lined bodies from the earth.

Kurapika crouched before one of the middle most stones where he could feel surrounded, imagining their energy leaching into the ground with each curl of grassroot and the march of every pillbug. His family was here with him. "I'm home, mom. Pairo. I've come home. I hope you didn't miss me, I'm sorry I couldn't be there with you, I'm sorry I couldn't lead the funeral myself."

He wiped sweat from beneath his eye, just the one, and then moments later the other. The sun beat down on his back and warmed the weeds to surround him in cicada song and the sweet scent of green things. He traced the spiral with his fingertips and sighed through the tightening sensation in his chest, as though his heart was attempting to curl like a fern frond to match.

Sitting here for much longer wouldn't do him any good, and the dead didn't linger in ways he could take comfort in. They were already the grass and the insects who ate the grass and the birds who ate the insects. Kurapika got to his feet and let them take him further down the grassy path towards the spring he remembered. It had grown since he'd last seen it pushing along towards the river. Now when he looked he didn't see a pond quickly choked with duckweed and lotus but a deep blue thing that pushed its weight around with ease.

Cypress and curling moss sat stately in the still, hot air. Sweat, true sweat gathered along his neck where his pale hair trapped the heat, and his skin began to prickle beneath his modest dress shirt. He mused that it was fortuitous the spring had grown large enough to swim in, rather than worry about the inevitable sink that would swallow his home whole one day.

When he worked his way down to the bank built by dried mud and cypress roots he noticed something odd amongst the thrushes. A pitifully waterlogged lump of black suede, decorated by cord that might once have held color but which seemed mostly bleached out. There were black feathers stuck inside the cording, of the same size and luster he'd grown accustomed to over the past two days.

Unease prickled beneath his collar this time. It wouldn't do to leave the hat where he found it however, at the very least he might use it to patch his clothes when necessary. The saliva in his throat felt like swallowing rocks as he made his way back to the house.

\---

_The moon was nothing more than a thief's shaving of pearl in the late evening sky. He walked alone, but he knew that he wasn't. He reached into his coat to retrieve a twisted paper and light the end. An evening stroll coming home from the town's saloon. He heard they would go out of business soon now that opium dens were popping up like the flowers themselves. Not in this town, he thought as he recalled his last interaction with the marshall._

_He coughed when he tried to speak. He must be growing the plant wrong, maybe it was turning to dust to give him a smoke so harsh. When his lungs cleared he managed to get his sentence out. "There's no need to be shy, boys. I'm a good host, why don't you come inside?" He stumbled over the roots he kept meaning to shave down, unruly things, when a hand shot out to grab his arm._

_Red eyes in the darkness, he wondered what had his guest so riled up. There was a chance he had misspoken in the saloon and lost the memory under the sea of whisky in his belly, but more likely this was an older anger. He took another drag from his joint, only for another hand to surprise him by flicking it away into the woods. "S'rude to waste product like that, even if it was a garbage shrub."_

_The eyes on his other side were brittle and angry but unlit. Not personal, or perhaps it was personal but for too many to tolerate. A foreboding wind blew the branches to clack into a frenzy; the devils rolling their dice._

_"Let's skip the hospitality and take a walk, witch."_

_"Family name, not in league with the guy although I do respect his works." One set of hands yanked him back on his heels while another collided with his jaw in the form of a fist. He was getting pissed off now. Fine, a scrap for a scrap. He snarled and kicked into soft gut with the force of a mule, then wrenched free of the Kurta man's arms to stumble into the weeds. A dab to the lip and a glance down revealed blood from his broken nose._

_"We've seen the signs Lucifer, been keeping a watch out for your nasty tricks." They advanced on him and he slunk further into the swamp, where starlight couldn't reach him._

_"Not well enough, clearly. What wassit took your wife again? Insanity? I've heard your whispers, it wasn't my doing."_

_"A witch, a thief, and a liar all in one. Go to hell, bastard, you can join the rest of your name."_

_Force like a cannonball met his shoulder and sent him down to the dirt like nothing more than a sack of grain. It was enough to dislodge his hat and allow the wind to play havoc with dark, wispy hair. Four hands took him by the shoulders and bent him onto his back, one hand from each set to secure his flailing arms as water closed in around his head._

_A shock of cold, a medium he couldn't inhale, but the bubbles left him all the same to breach the surface of the river and join the air he so desperately needed. His boots found no purchase in the slick, muddy bent and broken cattails. Red eyes and the sliver of moon surrounded by an army of stars._

_Darkness._

_Darkness._

_A softening sensation like the sigh of reeds in a current, and the stars smeared like all of heaven's angels loosing their arrows at once._

\---

Kurapika sat up in bed with a throat already raw from yelling. He wiped his face and his palm came away soaked, feeling again found his hair stuck to his skull and his clothes much the same to his skin. He leapt from his sheets to light a candle but his hand shook too much, leaving him to shake on his knees.

A dream. Sweat. A dream. But of what? A drowning dream if the sweat was so horrifying, but the less he shivered the less he could recall. Finally he lit his candle and let the warm light sooth his terror stricken soul.

By the time he could get off the floor, the last vestiges of his dream had vanished like smoke in the night.


	2. Mist

Kurapika tapped the pen against his jaw, curled up in the chair he'd dragged from the living room out onto the porch. The chairs that had been outside had all disintegrated to heaps of splinters or vaguely furniture shaped green moss and algae. Light slanted across his lap, and subsequently the notepad atop it, through the supports of the porch and the slats of the porch above him. He’s been a post-grad for so long focused on his thesis he forgot how lesson plans were supposed to be crafted. He did this from notes as a TA, he should theoretically be able to make one on his own. What did he intend to teach, what would make this interesting enough to the uninitiated to actually pass a class? Should he even care if they cared? If one was foolish enough to sign up for an _anthropology_ class without being at least mildly interested in the field that should not be the responsibility of the professional offering up their skills and knowledge.

_Who would risk the astronomical cost of a college class on something like this anyway if they weren’t dedicated to the idea?_

He slid the click release of the pen across his lips, but motion caught his eye and made him lift his head suddenly.  
  
Nothing. Well, nothing more than grey squirrels scurrying across the yard away from the house. He wondered what could have been dark enough to catch his attention so well but dismissed it as a passing airplane. His attention returned to the rudimentary outline that was beginning to turn his eyes to useless rocks inside his skull when his attention was grabbed yet again by a flicker of shadow. Darkness in the corner of his eye was a flighty distraction, but one that made the hairs stand up on his body. Little defenses to keep away the unknown.

Asking something like ‘who goes there’ felt silly, but the idea he wasn’t alone wouldn’t pass. He forced his eyes back to the page, and the next time the shadows cast by the porch wavered he caved. “I’m busy, please be respectful.” He was further unsettled that he was left in peace for the afternoon.

The sun careened into the horizon with his lesson plan only roughly crafted into a reasonable sense of order. Still, it was more progress than he’d made since he had begun the move, and he felt the sense of accomplishment that came with making progress on an arduous task. The slog of it left him hungry and aching in his lumbar and between the shoulder blades. It was with great effort that he dragged himself into the kitchen to slap spread on bread and call it dinner before crawling onto the couch to sleep.

That there was no hat on the coffee table didn’t cross his weary mind.

\---

The storm outside poured down with a fury that made Kurapika worry his car might be swept away along with the driveway. Branches snapped and fell to the ground, water poured down windows, and thunder fought to be heard over the din. His newly installed lights flickered with a distressing buzz before going out, dropping him into pitch darkness. He cursed. His laptop screen dimmed when its power source vanished; looked like he'd have to save the research for another time.

Lightning flashed, turning the windows a violent lilac and backlighting the shape of a man on his porch. The image alone was enough to launch him to his feet to move his back against the wall beside the front door. His pulse hammered. He didn't grab a weapon of any kind, just his body and the knowledge of how to use it. His eyes strayed to the grandmother clock that had stopped working long before he returned to the property, and then shifted to the lit screen shining at him from the kitchen. Three in the morning. An absurd time to show up at someone's house in the middle of nowhere, but it could be a camper in distress. It could also be an ax murderer with a sense of humor.

The knock was almost a surprise, coming just a moment before the next flash of lightning lit the room in sharp contrast. Kurapika took a breath, then slid the chain lock into place before undoing the padlock, the former much newer than the latter. He thought he felt a chuckle tickle his cheek, but he ignored it to open the door in time to the roll of thunder that shook the porch. In the darkness it was difficult to make out the shape of the man standing a foot back from the door, so he called out after an extended beat of silence. “Do you mind introducing yourself, stranger?”

The voice matched the laugh only moments before and it caused Kurapika’s hairs to stand on end. “The name’s Chrollo,” His tongue seemed to curl the words in ways both foreign and out-dated, like the clip of a transatlantic accent. “Mind if I come in?”

“Do you know where you are, Chrollo?”

“Of course I do. But as you can see, it’s rather inhospitable outside. I’d be more liable to talk given you have a dry home. Maybe a nip of whisky, if you don’t mind.” Kurapika eyed him for a moment longer before closing the door to undo the chain. He stepped back as he opened the door and allowed Chrollo to step inside. “Mighty kind of you.”

Kurapika blinked as Chrollo took his hat off and attempted to set it on a hook that didn’t exist. Chrollo paused, looked to his right and saw the plain wall and the coat stand off in the corner of the false threshold. He wet his lips. “Suppose they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” He set his hat and his half-soaked coat over the closest side of the stand. His hair dripped water onto the floor, but strangely his shoes tracked no mud.

“Are you camping somewhere nearby?” Kurapika shut the door and paced around his guest in a nervous semicircle, unwilling to turn away from the man as he led him into the kitchen. The computer seemed to take all of Chrollo’s attention and he trailed his fingertips over the keys, then the screen a half moment before it shut off. “Ah, press one of the keys, the power’s gone out but it still has some battery.”

A moment of silence followed by a tap, and the laptop turned back on. Chrollo still didn’t take his eyes away from the news page Kurapika had been reading. “Not camping, no. Is this an article about the massacre that took place here? Whyever would you want to move in after such a tragedy?” Finally Chrollo’s eyes slid to him and although his tone was not accusatory, his gaze sure was. Kurapika worried the roof of his mouth with a restless tongue before answering.

“It’s my house. I have business in the area and decided to take advantage of my family’s property.”

“Ah,” Chrollo’s expression lit up. “I see, how fortunate. Or unfortunate in the past-tense. Have you been living here long?”

“...” Kurapika declined to answer, instead half turning to the cabinets to pull out the bottle of rum and a glass. “No whisky, but I have spirits of a kind. Ice?”

Chrollo waved a hand and frowned accommodatingly, so Kurapika poured a couple fingers and handed off the glass. In one motion he had the glass tipped back and took the liquor down smoothly. When he set the glass down he met Kurapika’s intent frown with unnecessarily smug smirk. “To keep the cold at bay.”

Kurapika didn’t mention the humidity choking him in the absence of any air conditioning.

There was a gentle tap against wood as Chrollo set the glass down and openly studied his surroundings. It was strange, but Kurapika couldn't shake the feeling he recognized him from somewhere. He cleared his throat to gain his guests attention, "it's late, I won't be staying up for much longer. I have plenty of spare bedrooms you could sleep in if you'd like."

"Do you know how much of this house was rebuilt?" Chrollo peered up into the corners of the room, squinting as if he were inspecting something. When Kurapika looked all he could see was the framework of the building and its wooden slatted walls.

"From when?"

"Hm? Oh, from its original foundation." He lifted his arm. Along the line of sight, Kurapika could see where the wood of the kitchen framework changed in texture and color from that of the main entryway. "I'm sure if you look, you'll find all the edges of the older building."

"That must be from well before I was born then, this house has hardly changed during my memory." Kurapika drew nearer to the stranger to look at each edge he gazed upon. "That's an astoundingly good eye, are you an architect?"

"I suppose I'm more of a historian, which means some older buildings do intrigue me."

"I see."

Chrollo pushed damp, dark hair back over his scalp and his gaze rolled from the ceiling to meet Kurapika's. "You mentioned a bed? That sounds wonderful right about now."

\---

_The moon was nothing more than a thief’s shaving of pearl._

_Something was wrong._

_Kurapika walked along the night path towards home, haunted by the sensation of being watched from the path a few paces back._

_This didn’t feel right. But this was the way home indeed, if smaller than he remembered, lacking the veneer of concrete. The plants along the path, along the river, seemed to be less out of control, as if he had planted them recently. Smoke filled his lungs as he took a drag from the joint in his hand, and he felt himself speak as if on autopilot, “There’s no need to be shy, boys.” Kurapika looked at his hand and felt vertigo upon seeing skin multiple shades more pallid than it should be. The gnawing sensation of something being amiss washed over him once again and then ebbed away; a wave on the shore--no, more like the wake of a boat._

_The conversation went on as if he were a spectator in his own body, the replay of some moth-eaten film stuck in a forgotten attic. He tried to change the course as an unearthly dread overtook him, but there was nothing to stop the water from closing in over his head. Nothing to dislodge the hands holding him down._

_Drowning him._

_He was dying._

_A softening sensation like the sigh of reeds in a current, and the stars smeared like all of heaven's angels loosing their arrows at once._

He awakened with an almighty gasp and found himself standing amidst the weeds, shaking despite the heat of the night. The river eased on its way before him and swirled through cattails and the detritus duckweed, mud well settled over his feet by now. He must have been standing here for some time…

Kurapika brought a thumb to his mouth, teeth digging into the nail. He could remember the dream this time, and the sense of _déjà vu_ turned his blood to ice. For all intents and purposes he had just died and his body was finding it difficult to differentiate between the river water sapping his heat and the onset of rigor mortis. He looked around at the night woods and longed for any sound besides the swaying of leaves and water over limestone. He longed for a light besides that of the moon above and her entourage of stars.

_Reeds in current, stars like arrows._

A stone formed in his throat and he pushed hands into his hair to take himself by the roots, letting a sound like steam through his teeth before trudging back up to the house along the watchful path from the road.

\---

He had said, _‘I think I’ll take you up on that offer,’_ and decided to ignore the way Dr. Paladiknight wavered between pleased and worried. Whatever look Kurapika had on his face (or more likely, however deep the circles beneath his eyes) he was sure alcohol would loosen the man’s tongue enough to comment later on.

The offer for drinks was more of an excuse to take him to a venue in the city. Leorio, as he had asked to be called in a precious bid for blurring the work/social boundary, apparently knew both the owner of the bar as well as the band headlining for the night. An irish pub and oyster bar, the venue was outdoors and stagelit with neons and halogen street lights that lit up the surrounding apartments. Kurapika got the unique experience of seeing Leorio painted magenta and backlit in gold as they drank, too close to the stage to do anything less than shout across the small table.

“I just-”  
  
“What?” 

Leorio leaned over the table so Kurapika could stand a chance at hearing him. “I just don’t know how you live out there in the middle of nowhere, never really got the appeal of the countryside I guess.”

“Oh. Well I guess I grew up there, so I suppose it’s nostalgic.” Nowhere really felt like home, but the house in the swamp was in the running. Something about the zincite water would never let go of his heart, never feel like more than a stone’s throw from the tips of his fingers. Or, more recently, from roiling black beneath stars seeping into his leather shoes. “It’s not as boring as it sounds.”

“Not boring, just lonely. Where about did you say you were?” Leorio took a drink from his foamy mug while Kurapika cupped his own drink between his hands. Whisky the color of root tannin reflected his face and the string of multi-hued lanterns above his head. He followed Leorio’s lead before answering.

“Out in Ocala forest. White house by a river, during the day it looks like something from a fairytale.”

“Stops real quick when the sun goes down hunh? Wait, you said you grew up there, but you just moved in. Family home?” He continued when Kurapika simply nodded. “Ah, helping your folks out?”

“... I’m tending to them.” What was the point of dancing around the subject? Children kept secrets plain as day to their elders, and despite the minimal age difference between them he could tell Leorio was catching the scent of blood.

“Ah. I think I remember why your name sounded familiar.”

Kurapika knocked his glass back and waved a hand, offering a smile free of any trace of a wince, the liquor went down smooth and delectably hot. “It was a long time ago, I’d rather not get into all that.”

Leorio thumbed foam from his five o’clock mustache and nodded, but his brow settled into a natural slope and crease that came from a lifetime of worry. “You getting on alright out there by yourself? A place like that doesn’t forget shit.”

A uselessness sat on Kurapika’s tongue, mouth hung with a brow to match his companion’s. Slowly, he regained the ability to speak. “That’s the thing, isn’t it,” The glass had a texture that caught reassuringly beneath his nail as he passed it through weeping condensation. “I hardly feel alone these days.

\---

The door to one of the guest bedrooms sat ajar with no light showing from within and no sound making its way to Kurapika’s ears as he slipped his shoes on by the door, soft slippers dyed traditionally, if not well. He wasn’t sure if the man was even still in his house but he had better things to do than babysit a stranger. Still, he left his laptop locked in the trunk of his car just in case.

The air that greeted him was cool and damp, leaving a mantle of droplets like jewels along each of his fine dermal hairs, clumping and curling the longer blond locks. The limestone grave markers glimmered in the afternoon sun as he walked through them to the spring, not daring to touch them as he passed lest he wear them down faster than the elements. It might be tradition, but he wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

Down the increasingly muddy path, light footfalls against roots and exposed stone banks until longer grasses brushed his ankles. The spring opened before him like a waiting maw, and despite the birdsong he felt as though something were wrong; off. Unease sat in his belly and caused him to flick his gaze around for the predator that must surely be there. But there was nothing. There were no snakes, no wild cats, and the most threatening fish within his line of site were slowly drifting gars.

His eyes were drawn, gradually, back to the spring itself.

A sense of the weird took hold of him and kept him from looking away, and he was struck with the curiosity of what else this eye had seen. What else this weeping wound in the earth had played silent witness to, and he remembered wet socks and the indifferent wrath of something greater than himself.

A turn of the gut had him crouched between the reeds to splash cold water on his face until the images were gone. That his own reflection should startle him when he opened his eyes was between him and the gars. “I must be losing my mind…”

“Talking to the snakes?”

Kurapika tipped chest first into the water. Chest first, because his head whipped around to catch sight of his guest standing a mere pace away looking pleasantly curious, followed by a rictus glee as Kurapika splashed fully into the river. He had the decency to help pull the man back onto the muddy shore, but there was no angling his pride alongside him. “What,” Kurapika sputtered through the rivulets, “is wrong with you? You spy on someone and then shock them without so much as snapping a twig?”

“Step lightly,” Chrollo smiled as he pushed Kurapika’s wet hair off his face.

“And carry a big ego, now is not the time to drop kernels of wisdom thank you.” His clothes hung heavily off his body and his shoes were small fountains as he took a step towards the house, then another.

A laugh, and he heard Chrollo follow just behind. “I was out here first, if we must pick our details. It’s no fault of mine you were so lost in thought you didn’t look up from the path.”

“Please go inside and get me a towel, they’re in the upstairs hall closet.” Kurapika crossed his arms and leaned against the porch railing, his feet planted firmly in the overgrown garden with his face turned far enough he might avoid the sidelong glance Chrollo sent him.

“...Of course,” Smooth as molasses and dark as a noir film, he was gone in a flit of shadow that was suddenly all too easy to recognize.


	3. Rain

“So where are you staying?”

The day was breezy enough to make the house creak and sway in the way old houses did. Sunlight shone in through glass windows Kurapika had recently replaced, and his guest sat curled over the kitchen table with a glass in his hands that Kurapika couldn’t seem to recognize. It couldn’t be his, so Chrollo must have brought it himself. But he had no bag on him so where had he kept it? His brow drew down in thought and stayed there when Chrollo looked up at him with a placid smile and raised brows. It was as if Kurapika were a child asking questions reserved to mothers to titter over.

“Nearby. I don’t mean to intrude, but it has been getting a bit warm out lately,” There was a quality to Chrollo’s eyes that unnerved him, but he couldn’t yet place his finger on it. “Mosquitoes make for terrible bed partners.”

Kurapika’s original thought that this might be a camper seemed close to the truth, but if the way Chrollo said it was true then he wasn’t on some pleasure hike. “Making yourself an indefinite guest is a bit intrusive.” Kurapika crossed his arms but let his eyes drop to the cracked tiled floor, floral painted and placed in frames of darker tile.

“I like what you’ve done with the place.” Chrollo slips through his attempts at conversation to say such banal nonsense. A constant, airy disinterest.

“In comparison to what, I’m not sure I want to know,” He watched the man’s face duck with a closed-mouth laugh. “But thank you. I don’t have any reason to send you on your way if you’re in need of housing, but don’t pretend you aren’t being a nuisance, please. I can be an understanding host but I am not a simpleton.”

There was a curl to Chrollo’s lips, wisteria reaching from his teeth in tendril twists. “I’ll be sure to keep out of trouble.”

Chrollo’s idea of staying out of Kurapika’s hair was, apparently, to drink his liquor while he was asleep. Kurapika came out to find the empty bottles strewn about the living room, the air thick with the scent as if Chrollo had done little more than pour them out directly onto the wooden floor. 

A special sort of despair settled in as he thought of how much more work this would add to renovating the house, how much time he would have to dedicate to this when he needed to be working, how distracting the smell was going to be. He gathered up the bottles first just to get the ball rolling, and set them in the trash. With a sigh, he covered his face and pushed his fingertips into the hollows above the curve of his eyes.

When he opened them, the bottles he had thrown away were at their original levels and capped. The smell had vanished.

A tilt of the head, a blink, and the bottles remained untouched.

\---

Water ran through the pipes above Kurapika’s head as he worked on the couch while rain once again came down to herald the onset of evening. So his guest was keeping clean. ‘That’s a point in his favor,’ he thought with uncharitable malaise settling into his joints. His attention was quickly reabsorbed back into his laptop. The water eventually stopped and soon the memory slipped from his mind. When he climbed the stairs for a bathroom break it was with the assumption that Chrollo had finished his shower and retreated to his room.  _ 'The guest room he's borrowing,' _ Kurapika corrected mentally a single second before his mind went blank.

He saw skin, every inch of it glistening wet. Water clumped Chrollo's hair into black racers and the steam nearly choked Kurapika where he stood. Finally he turned his face away and coughed an apology, but no response met his ears.

Silence.

Not just a lack of speech, but true silence, even the sound of Chrollo washing himself had stopped. Kurapikas brows furrowed, and he dared to incriminate himself by stealing another glance.

The bathroom was empty, dark, and dry. The scene weighed Kurapika's heart down to his stomach and made him step inside to turn the light on. Not even residual water in the tub from what should have been a whole bath. Had he imagined it? He couldn't have, not in such detail, not for some pesky vagabond house guest.

A shiver ran the length of his body, ear to ankle and he shot a look over his shoulder, only to see an empty hallway.

\---

They read together in the sunset lit living room, although Kurapika supposes that's simplifying things more than a little. Chrollo had taken to regularly haunting the living room and reading until the light was gone. Today was no exception; it found them sitting in the falling darkness with Chrollo still thumbing through a book Kurapika didn’t recognize as one of his own or any of the pest eaten ones from before he moved back in.

Kurapika’s eyelids dropped, drooped, then stuck more firmly together. He lifted his head and blinked at the shape of Chrollo in only feet away, fully obscured now. The sun set fast once it was on its descent. He blinked again this time without as much glue in his eyes, but the lack of a guest in the seat across from him caused him to wake up quickly. He whipped his head around, by now sure he was losing it, and sucked in a gust of shared air as the man seemed suddenly to appear before him.

Chrollo’s hand settled on his shoulder and gripped him, a steadying sensation. “My, you look a little bloodless there, Kura.”

“I, ah, my eyes are just playing tricks on me. It’s been a long… day…” His jaw stilled uselessly hung open as Chrollo slid into his lap, his far arm wrapping around Kurapika’s other shoulder. Cool lips at his ear, chillier breath like the mist off the river outside. “Don’t you think this is a bit much?”

“Why?” A soft hand cradled Kurapika’s cheek, the pad of Chrollo’s thumb sliding over his eyelid once before bracing against cheekbone. The softness Kurapika’s face held when he lived here last had left him, sharpened his jaw and sunken the hollows of his cheeks enough to show a definition he’d never known on his own features before. It took the shape of his mother’s face and carved out his father’s in its place with varying success. The bridge of Chrollo’s nose nestled into Kurapika’s brow and that chilly night mist slid over his face again. “You don’t seem awfully opposed.”

“I’m not sure how I feel lately, for the sake of transparency. I do know,” He reached up to grip Chrollo’s wrist and get his eyes to focus on the shape of his thighs in his lap. “That this is awfully forward.”

He felt himself drool into their laps, and his brow furrowed. Not drool, it was coming from far deeper in his body, and far more than what his salivary glands would produce. Kurapika tried to breathe in and found that impossible thanks to the water bubbling up from his lungs like a spring. Confusion warped into fear as he lifted his head and was met with Chrollo’s glittering black eyes all too close to his own for his vision to focus. Cool hands took both sides of his face and he tensed with the urge to convulse.

This made no sense.

He shook his head and Chrollo stroked his cheeks, impassive and too soft for the situation.

“Kurapika?”

Air rushed into his lungs and Kurapika wiped sweat from his face as Chrollo suddenly appeared at the foot of the stairs and not at all in his lap. Kurapika stared at him as he heaved for air and clutched his soaked shirt--the only remnant to match his waking dream. “Yes, I’m fine. Do you need something? Ah, could you turn the lights on first?” He was shaking and his eyes strained in the dark, hopefully the light would soothe his nerves somewhat. Chrollo hummed and flipped the switch, bathing the room in slanted light from the fixture above the stairs.

“You look a bit bloodless there, Kurapika.”

His heart skipped a beat as he focused suddenly on Chrollo. He knew his features were stricken, there was nothing else for them to be but  _ stricken _ when he was clearly and spectacularly losing his mind. When he tried to speak his tongue stuck in his throat until he cleared it. “I. I need to lie down, I think.” 

He got to his feet and held onto the chair while his blood caught up to the rest of him, and he kept his eyes down as he passed the other man in order to climb the stairs to his room. He just needed to lie down. If he could just get some elusive sleep then perhaps his rioting mind would calm down and return to a baseline questionable sanity.

\---

_ The path beneath his slippers was well worn from the witch’s many visitors. All sorts came down here to his swamp for unknowable reasons, any reasons they had couldn’t be good and neither were his own. Murder sang through his veins on this night. _

_ “There’s no need to be shy, boys. I’m a good host, why don’t you come inside?” _

_ He watched Chrollo stumble and smoke, flush high on his face with mussed up hair to look all the more like a tramp. Just one of many rumors and by far the most tolerable. If this little shit were just some kind of whore he could be left to his own devices, but they knew the truth. They knew about the hexes, the curses, the unexplained maladies befalling man, beast, and ground since the witch began showing his face around town more. _

_ He grabbed Chrollo as he stumbled over yet more crawling roots and flicked the cigarette out of his mouth. He couldn’t hear the man’s next volley of smarm over the rushing of blood in his ears. _

_ "Let's skip the hospitality and take a walk, witch." _

_ When Kurapika drowned Chrollo in the river, he could see his own reflection in the water over his victim’s face. He felt the water and the mud cling to him long after they hauled the body out of the weeds and dragged him into the house. It’s eves were hung with green moss at least a thumbnail thick. The interior was dark and cluttered with books, bones, warped scraps of metal and more candles than anyone could stand in an enclosed space. They melted over and into each other where they stood thickly in patches across the room. His accomplice allowed the witch to fall to the floorboards with a deep thud. _

_ “What now?” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “What now is we go into town and tell someone we found him in the river.” Kurapika couldn’t recognize his own voice. It must be his, he could feel his vocal cords moving, but this was so abhorrent it made his gut turn. How was he still so angry? “Anyone in that bar knows he left in a state, we’re just reporting after pulling his body up.” _

_ “Won’t hear different from me.” _

_ Kurapika nodded, and looked around at the hut once over again. With the witch dead at his feet, he supposed he wouldn’t be needing this hovel anymore. Although he wasn’t optimistic too much could be saved, it might be better to burn the place down and start over. His eyes slipped along the support beams and saw that they were sturdy, and changed his mind. _

_ No. He would do the hard work and make it livable, and add onto it. If no one townside objected of course. When he looked down again, Chrollo’s eyes were open wide glassy with death, glaring through him to the soul beneath.  _

\---

When he woke up, it was like he was fucking drunk. His lids refused to open further than slits, eyes attempting to stay rolled back despite the weight above him. The weight, the shadow, the overwhelming sensation that something is very wrong. That he is not alone, and that he cannot move, and that he cannot hear the cicadas.

There is no reason he shouldn’t be able to hear the cicadas in a midsummer Florida swamp.

Kurapika managed, with all the force in his fully lax muscles, to twitch his head up slightly and gain a moment of clarity. There was a body over him like the night had swept in through the window and coalesced into a man’s body. Raven wings curved down to hide his face, and his fingers were mere bone pressed over the hot skin of Kurapika’s exposed biceps. He had pulled the blanket back. No. Kurapika had tossed it off during his fitful sleep.

The incubus from antiquity sat heavy on his gut, it’s body pressed into his from the lower ribs down to their ankles, gut to gut and calf to calf. Kurapika drifted in a murky river bottom, slow moving and ever flowing, sleep reclaiming him half-assedly without allowing him to lose awareness of this moment or the creature,  _ the person _ , atop him.

A gurgle that should have been a shout stayed glued beneath his tongue. Again, he jolted himself to a half-arch of the neck and stared his demon in it’s pale face. The moon carved out the hollows of a familiar face until it was hardly recognizable, skeletal and lillian in the washout of light. Chrollo swallowed up all the sound in the room and breathed it out into Kurapika’s mouth--a kiss that slammed his mind so far into sleep he couldn’t be sure he heard right.

“Do you know that this house belongs to me, squatter?”

\---

Kurapika sat with his forehead pressed into the steering wheel, keys already taken out and gripped in one white knuckled fist. He stared at the blurry leather, knowing he should get out of his car and walk up those steps to his office. He knew he should but his whole venal system felt like it was filled to bursting with solid lead. His eyes shut. Night flowers curling shut from the merciless rays of the sun. He leaned heavier into the wheel until the blare of his horn sent him back with a shocked gasp, eyes wide but unseeing as he woke up the hard way.

One of the people he recognized as an advisor tilted at the hips to check on him through the windshield, having slowed to a rolling stop on their way past. He gave a short nod to keep them on their way and brought a hand up to massage his aching ribs. His heart was beating hard enough it hurt, so he sat until he felt he could reasonably leave his car without causing a second scene.

Up the path and through the doors to walk through the hall of the humanities building. Kurapika’s dream (and that must be what it was, although he knew he was deluding himself) flitted in and out of his senses. The feeling of being trapped in a body unwilling to move; a weight that settled over him and would not let up; _Ipomoea alba_ in the shape of someone’s face--the shape of a skull. For the second time that day he nearly startled out of his skin as a hand dropped onto his shoulder, causing him to bite his tongue and whirl so his back hit the wall. His vision settled on the advisor from before. "Yes?? Yes, can I, ah, help you?" Sweat stuck to his skin hottest where his clothes bunched or layered. He felt a bit like the humidity had followed him in and was making a solid attempt at suffocating him, the hallway too bright for him to read the backlit man's lanyard.

"I'm sorry, I think I should… come back when you aren't so tense. Are you alright? You look kinda sick."

"Thank you, I feel kind of sick. If you'll excuse me." With speed bordering on fleeing, he turned heel and strode the final stretch of hallway to slip into his office with the heavy click-thunk of the door sliding into place. Sanctuary. Never mind the open window never mind the black feather that fell to the floor as he removed his coat. Kurapika dropped into his chair and melted across the desk with fingers shoved into his eye sockets.

He was not acting nearly as stable as he would like for his first tenured position.

The way time moved him through the day didn't make sense. Either the minute hand trudged muddy across the face of the clock on his desk, or it smeared into oblivion while he lost hours. Kurapika grabbed the box off the corner of his desk and held the ticking menace against his face, just able to see the month and day flipcards beside the little black hands, his vision blurred from exhaustion.

He blinked, and woke up to a knock at his door. "Come in." His voice was a mumble that hardly pushed air past his chest, but his silence was enough for the door to open after a pause. 

Leorio leaned into his room with his back to the door, revolving with it along the hinges. "Hey…" he drew the word out with a half grin and sharp eyes. Worried. "I saw your car was still here. Normally I'm the last man standing, you doing… alright?" Kurapika was blatantly not doing alright. He was clutching a timepiece to his face and snoozing without so much as slumping in his chair.

He meant to reply, but the longer he looked at Leorio the harder the words stuck in his throat. Hard sap bleeding from pines, pouring down his throat to clog somewhere in the middle. Leorio straightened up and took in a steadying breath, then nodded. Silently he took the room, slipped Kurapika's laptop into his bag along with the charger, and tossed his three little paper coffee cups into the trash. Why hadn't he just used the same one?

"C'mon buddy, you can crash at my place alright? You don't look good for the road."

"... ah," Kurapika flinched back into his body sometime after Leorio got him to his feet. "No, I have to go home. I'll be alright, thank you."

"Yeah I don't believe that at all."

"That is not my problem." With an immense effort both mental and physical, he put a hand on Leorio's broad chest and pushed him away. The man's cologne wreathed around him like… like something he knew. Some sickly sweet plant whose name and shape eluded him in the moment. He gave Leorio a stiff curl of the lips that even he knew passed for a miserable smirk, then took possession of his shoulder strap. "Thank you for the push to get moving however. If you hadn't been so nosy I may have spent the night with my window open."

"You, look," His progress towards the door was cut short and that simple loss of momentum caused his eyelids to droop heavily. "You look fucking terrible. I think you should consider getting yourself looked at."

"If I get myself looked at, I will have to get myself checked in." Kurapika's head drooped towards the softest place to land--that being his coworker's chest. "You see, I'm perfectly well, Leorio. I just seem to be losing the plot."

Leorio touched his shoulder and once again he straightened as if shocked. Brown eyes to wide hazel, Kurapika staggered back until his heel met the threshold and his shoulder pushed against the wall. "Good evening, Dr. Paladiknight. Safe travels."

He left the mathematician to lock his office behind him.

\---

The cloying scent he’d noticed before on Leorio was recognizable as he stood upon crushed lilies in the thin patch of foliage between the path and the river. He faced away from the rushing water, contemplating the way Spanish moss hung and swayed from the oaks around his property. Fuzzy and a green-grey offwhite that reminded him of the fur lining the edges of his guest’s coat. The very same one that brushed his ankles and pushed up against his back, his spine aligning with the curve of Chrollo’s torso as arms encircled him. He was gripped close, like he might otherwise float away beyond this haunted greenery.

“You are so angry. Even now, you’re furious.” Kurapika’s voice sounded so far away. He closed his eyes as one of those soft hands moved up to brace his throat, pushing in until he let his head drop against Chrollo’s shoulder.

“Wouldn’t you be?”   
  
“I am. It was you wasn’t it, who slaughtered them? Bathed this house in the blood of my family.”

Chrollo pressed his lips to Kurapika’s shoulder and hummed. “You understand then, better than most. Better than anyone else. None of those sheep ever so much as questioned him as they built overtop my home and moved in. So I treated them as such. You,” Chrollo’s hand tightened on his esophagus before pulling away to turn Kurapika to face him. “However, questioned everything. You left.”

Kurapika swallowed thickly before opening his eyes to the open river. He was alone, but he was growing used to the sensation and its accompanying vertigo. He had left hadn’t he? Run off in the middle of the night so no one could stop him from playing hobo in the campgrounds miles and miles away from home. He had run away and experienced the outside world for the first time, and gone home to ruined Neverland.

The river flowed endlessly as it had before he left and before he’d been born, and the damn thing would continue to flow long after he died.


	4. Thunderstorm

The library was cool, a welcome change from the swelter beyond its concrete block walls and pollen-smeared, floor to ceiling windows. He had his laptop out and a cup of coffee he brewed a second time through the machine in his office to help him figure out just what in the name of anyone’s gods had taken up residence in his home. Demons of the christian persuasion, pagan fey, trickster spirits, and finally, hauntings. It would make sense for Chrollo to be a very pissed off ghost clinging to the house he’d built with his own two hands out in the muck and mire.  _ ‘How would I know if it was of his own construction, I wonder…’ _

There was also the possibility Kurapika had lost his mind.

If Chrollo were a ghost haunting the premises, then why would Kurapika have any of his memories? The idea he might just be a figment of his imagination was as likely as anything at this point, especially given how disturbed he’d been as a teenager. Traumatic incidents did not make for a healthy mind. With every option bleak, he considered whether he’d rather this be psychosis or supernatural. Given that the violent deaths of his family didn't render them as full figments in his mind left him willing to believe he wouldn’t make up a random person on the spot, and he’d rather be questionably sane but correct about this than losing his grip entirely.

With more curiosity than dread in mind he shut his laptop to search for a Chrollo Lucifer in the local birth and death records. If he had truly lived here then he must have left behind some record. Perhaps he should try the public library in town, that might yield more results than a disconnected campus.

Someone scuffed the ground with their shoe to his left. Kurapika’s head hung over an obituary from a promising year as he peered sideways at his fellow faculty member. “Rumor I might jump?”

“Something like that.” Leorio scratched his scalp before registering his glasses. “Came to talk about that actually. See, I get you don’t wanna talk about it or back down from shit you’ve started-”

_ ‘Perceptive, or I’m more of an open book than I used to be’ _

“-But you don’t actually have to do this all by yourself.” Arms crossed, hip against a bookshelf, the very image of nonchalance. Leorio was a poor actor.

“Why are you so eager to help me, Paladiknight?”   
  


“Leorio, and it’s ‘cause I know that stubborn mule look in your eyes is the same I see every morning.” 

That got a snort out of Kurapika and left him smiling at the shelf before him. The smile faded, his eyelids drooped, and with the trepidation of one about to step into an open field he let the words fall out. “Leorio, my apologies. Would you consider yourself a superstitious man?”

“Not one good thing ever comes of asking that, y’know.” Leorio’s brows drew together as he straightened, then stooped. He had a way of standing above others that seemed considerate of his size, or perhaps overcritical. Kurapika’s own posture had laxed in ways he didn’t have the wherewithal to analyze anymore. Not with the exhaustion gnawing on his bones and withering his nerves to brittle wire. “Yeah, can’t seem to shake it. They say there's no ghosts in Christian myth but name one Catholic, ex or otherwise, who doesn’t think they've seen at least one.” He looked down at the laminated newspaper obit in Kurapika’s hands, sober and thoughtful.

Kurapika sighed. “There’s no room in my own beliefs, and yet I seem to be haunted nonetheless, by a man I’ve never heard of. He dogs my dreams, shadows my home.”

“Is that why you had to go home?” Kurapika nodded and sat down to lean his back against the shelf, and felt a nameless relief as Leorio joined him with crossed legs and a jaw in both hands, elbows propped on his knees. “Do you really see him?”

The sensation of being too exposed and under prepared stilled his tongue, but Kurapika pushed on. He needed to reach out, just this once, if for nothing else than some form of confirmation. “I’ve felt him against my skin. He doesn’t leave so much as a trace of his being but I have felt him, heard him, seen him. It’s-”

His jaw snapped shut from surprise as Leorio reached out for his arm, the sensation like a bolt of lightning. “Don’t do that!”

“Sorry, you were hyperventilating.” Leorio lifted both hands with his own teeth grit in chagrin.

“Was I…” He felt winded, sure, but he’d thought that was from speaking, or perhaps being startled. It took more effort to watch Leorio’s face than he had the spirit for anymore, and he let his gaze drop to the floor. The library air conditioning was cold on his sweaty skin, that was the sensible explanation to why he began shivering, little shudders that locked his joints and made him ache. “You said I didn’t have to do this alone. Would you like a new research assignment?”

When he looked up to find Leorio’s face, there was a settling in his heart. “A little out of my wheelhouse, but a challenge is a challenge.”

“Something to be overcome,” Kurapika finished the thought on gut feeling alone and was rewarded by Leorio’s smile settling the last scurryings of doubt. “I need whatever you can find on how to deal with this. The good, the bad, and the ugly, all of it. Please.”

\---

There might have been room in his heart at one point for some kind of truce of some sort. There might have been, had his spectral guest not begun leaving him threatening reminders in the form of dead fauna wherever he went. The message couldn’t be more clear; A dead rat someplace a dead rat shouldn’t be, in a frequency that rats should not be found dead without the aid of pest control. The ground itself was poison, and Chrollo was going to make sure he ate it the same way he had.

Chrollo’s pets most likely killed the vermin for him, although he hesitated to separate them from the term with how they plagued him. The time of year crows were found in numbers like these had long passed with the coming of summer, hot winds and swaths of humidity fit to drown man or beast, whichever was unluckiest. Yet despite the untimeliness of their appearance they lined the wires and filled the trees, rancorous and ever-shifting. It was hard to tell, as usual, if they were really there or in the numbers he saw or if they were yet another of Chrollo’s illusions.

A bird perched on the wooden handrail of the porch before Kurapika as he peeled a peanut out of its papery casing, the red mesh bag he’d bought them in sat on the table beside him. He eyed the bird. It eyed him back, just as intently, it’s head flicking one way and then the other until Kurapika flicked a nut towards it. It’s call of surprise echoed outwards in a wave through the trees and bounced between beasts until the rhythm was lost in a cacophony of sound that hurt his head.

Irritation bubbled, then boiled over into a rage until he slammed his hand into the bag to hurl a fistful of nuts at the bird on the porch, chasing it off with a wild arm and a fury thrumming his heart to pieces. A flurry of black as the crow took to the sky along with its fellows, and then an almighty rushing of wings as they arched and redirected their fall towards the house. Kurapika stepped back, then ran inside to slam the door behind him and bar it with his body.

Silence.

Kurapika stood shaking with his hands pressed to warm wood as his ears rang. Nothing, not the sound of wings nor snapping beaks, like the tsunami of feathers had faded to dead air. His head twitched to the side, then further back to glance through the window between the curtain and the wall. Merely a hot summer’s day

His shaking continued long into the evening, but the ache of tense muscles stayed longer. A dream, a morning of Chrollo smiling at him from the kitchen table over his cup that had never known Kurapika’s cupboards, and a drive into town that felt more like floating over the road like river mist. The feeling of that smile followed him to his office. The sensation of ants beneath his sock, his undershirt, invisibly crawling and leaving their burning trail of pyrazine in the wake. There were no ants, and no man either for all Kurapika could see, at least until the bird on his desk fluttered into the chair across from him and took the form of an amorphous shadow. From the shadow melted in the features of a man he knew all too well these days.

“You look tense, Kura.”

“And you’re getting bold for a spirit. You’ve followed me before.” It struck him that he knew, now, the black feathers had been Chrollo’s personal mark. The smile that twitched to life on his guest’s face spoke to that.

“Clever. You surprise me sometimes with how astute you can be, and yet it took you months to wrestle with the nature of my existence. Did you think it unscientific to believe I might be what I am?”

“I found it inconvenient for the most part. You’ve stolen quite a lot of sleep from my life,” He paused, the word rolling over his tongue as a chalky pebble. Limestone spite that would melt the moment it was spoken. “Witch.”

Chrollo didn’t flinch as he expected, but instead his features obscured with a swirl of darkness. It seemed his form was as solid as his concentration, or perhaps he was weaker so far from home. “You haven’t seen it yet, have you? The pathetic grave they gave my body after they murdered me.”

“If it’s not on the property then no, obviously.”

“Oh it’s there. Not as pretty as the family lot you little pagans gave yourselves.” Chrollo pulled a feather from his hair and licked along the barbs so they realigned, then slid a notebook closer to himself to begin scribbling with the end of the feather. A map bloomed in lightless black ink depicting the lot with minimal embellishments, a smaller house than Kurapika knew to be there. “They put me off as far from my house as they could stomach hauling my body, dug me a hole and marked it with a stick while they made the headstone. They spelled my fucking name wrong.”

Chrollo set the feather down to laugh. It sounded ugly, like he’d knocked something loose within his chest and found it hard to huff past, eyes shut and hand curling into a fist. Kurapika wet his lips, but Chrollo spoke before he could. “The whole town hated me. If it wasn’t your great grand-bastards it would have been some other poor saps who did me in. Lucky you. Although now that I think about it maybe I’ve been too nearsighted in my revenge. They were living such petty lives crawling around on their bellies for gods and masters who never gave a damn for them.”

“Why did they hate you, did you really do those things they accused you of?” Kurapika was willing to believe in an innocent witch, willing to believe in a misunderstood man who suffered from pervasive beliefs and simple human discontentedness. His budding hope rotted from the stem down at the soft look Chrollo gave him.

“All that and more, my dear. One does amazing things with the hands of the devil on one’s shoulders.” There was a light to the backs of Chrollo’s dead dark eyes, some dim emanation that reminded Kurapika of an angler fish’s lantern, or perhaps the film over its eyes after being brought to the deadly surface. “They hated me with good reason and they killed me to save their own skin, their shameful way of living where they took from others but would rather sweep that fact beneath every floorboard and wishing well on the continent. Do you think they were innocent victims?”

“My cousin was. My mother was.”

“Your mother slept above my bed, the bitch may as well have killed me herself with her ignorance. I should level this town, honestly. Not even for the grander idea of a fallen civilization but just because you’re all so damn easy to send below.” Chrollo sunk talons into the wood of Kurapika’s desk and carved a path across the surface; Five deep gashes leaving splinters to flutter from their combined breath.

“You don’t care that they killed you. You’re insulted because they were insects to you.” Kurapika met Chrollo’s eyes easily and saw the rabid dog that was put down in his dreams. “For a moment I almost thought you were noble.”

Malice and hunger twisted into a sneer. “Pity you catch on so slow.”

\--- 

“You wanted something to work with and I got a lot of crap, but,” Leorio slapped a fistful of paperwork down on his desk as Kurapika stepped into the man’s office. Lots of photographs set around the room of what appeared to be students or colleagues, it was difficult to tell with how large Leorio was compared to most people, as well as an extremely tasteless calendar with this month’s mostly naked woman leaning backwards over a race car. “I did contact my Mom who contacted her preacher who sent me an email-”

“Leorio.”

“Well he told me the basics of an exorcism, which I could probably help with. He also told me about binding spirits to things but that seemed a lot more involved and kinda, uh.”

“Kind of what?”

Leorio took his glasses off to clean what were no doubt perfectly clear lenses. “Bleak. Look I’m not even totally convinced you haven't lost your marbles if I’m being honest. I don’t want you doing crazy shit just because I told you how, okay?”

“Did you tell me how?” Kurapika picked up the paperwork as Leorio gestured towards it. 

“Among other things. I looked into what else it might be, who else you could call to help you take care of this or cleanse your house or whatever.”

“... Thank you.” He set the stack of papers down and stepped forward to wrap his arms around Leorio’s torso. A hesitation, but then two large arms pulled him into a tighter embrace.

“Where’d all that standoffish bullshit attitude go?” Leorio pulled back to look him over. The teasing smile Kurapika had expected from the tone of voice was replaced with pure brow-furrowed worry.

Kurapika smiled.

“The way of the _thylacine_ , Doctor. I’m taking the wins that come my way.”

\---

Water bottles lined the kitchen counter up against the wall, cupboard filled with however many canned goods Kurapika could bring home each day after work. The recent rains were warning shots across the bow for the greater gales soon to come, and he’d like to beat the warnings to stock up by as much as he could. He’d rather his preparations not put others out.

As he lay in bed, an arm encircled Kurapika’s waist as a very real body pressed up against the length of his back, warm breath over his shoulder. Kurapika’s spit felt too thick to swallow as Chrollo spoke, soft and deep. Molasses over dwindling coals. “Stocking up for a party, my love?” His nose brushed over the nape of Kurapika’s neck and sent an icy chill along his spine straight to every nerve ending. He had to forcibly calm his breathing afterwards.

“There’s a storm gathering over the Atlantic. I suppose you’ve got the right idea, something of a hurricane party.” Chrollo’s hand slid under the hem of his shirt to drag the backs of inhuman talons over his skin. They moved up to his clavicle, then down around the curve of his hip over the boxers to grip tight enough to leave marks before tugging him until he turned to face his bed partner.

“Sounds like fun.” His dark hair was down and splayed across the pillow, but his eyes kept that fish-like film, a glow from the moon catching in the near opalescence of it and bringing Kurapika’s shivering back to his body. It seemed he couldn’t stay warm enough anymore despite the summer heat, despite the body pressed close to him. “Going to bring your friends along? I’m sure that mathlete would love a tour of the renovations.”

“Just us.” His voice failed and threw him into a whisper that brushed Chrollo’s bangs away from his cheek. “Just you… And me. Weathering the storm.”

Chrollo moved forward with a hum, and Kurapika’s eyes fell shut when the other’s nose slid along his jaw, into the line of his throat. A nuzzle, and then the click of teeth over a hollow mouth. “I look forward to that, having you all to myself for a while.” Their knees slid freely against each other until their bodies slotted without gaps to keep them apart. Kurapika thought he was prepared for Chrollo’s strangeness by now, but truly the continuation of a single heartbeat and no echo left him shaking ever harder beneath the blanket they shared.

\---

Heavy grey clouds rushed to corner Kurapika in his driveway as he hauled the last of his supplies into the house; a backpack full of as much liquor as he could close the zipper around, and then he still carried a few bottles in his arms. The batteries and generator were already inside and tucked away, water purifier for the sink as well as tablets.

What he intended to do was only a temporary solution.

What he intended to do was completely insane.

Kurapika could smell the rain as it washed over the swamp and swirled ever closer, could taste the waterlogged dust and diffused chlorophyll that too would be battered down and replaced with the clean scent of broken wood and mud. He went out to the car once more as if to check for anything he might have missed, knowing he had missed nothing, and sequestered himself in the driver’s seat. The clouds had long since covered the sun, but now they truly darkened the world in a pseudo sunset.

As the rain reached the end of the long driveway he felt eyes on him from the house. Felt, but did not see. Did not look. He closed his own and dropped a hand to caress the carpet siding of his seat until his fingers hooked on the plastic lever. The rain slammed into the roof of his car, and he reclined back. Washed away with the detritus along the churning river. 

He was washed beneath the spring hole, and he did not resurface until nightfall.


	5. Hurricane

One last time stepping foot on campus. Kurapika came late and parked near buildings seven and eight with his hands on two and ten until he could get up. His body felt heavy. His heart felt heavier. He had made so many plans, and seen not one of them through besides the most self destructive one. Of course. His candle was thrown into a brush fire the moment he moved back home.

Kurapika shut the door behind him and made his way to his office, ignoring the open door of his classroom full of abandoned students, likely confused, likely frustrated with being held here by a responsibility their own teacher hadn’t bothered to uphold.

He could be a real bastard to people sometimes.

The office was free of black feathers or dead rats for once and he wondered if Chrollo was terrorizing people in town yet. He set his laptop and notebooks on top of the desk, and slid the notepad over to write down all the necessary passwords. No note, no apology; those were for dead men leading regretful final moments and travelers going out of state.

Leorio knew where he was. If he got the idea in his head to track him down and pay a visit… Kurapika would deal with the curve balls as they came. Semi-foreseen futures in a cosmically disastrous reality. Kurapika caught himself standing too long with nothing to do and thinking nothing useful to his situation, and so he turned his body as if by great force in order to walk out of his unlocked office and back across the lawn. 

Over the sidewalk, over the parking lot, into his car, turn on the windshield wipers as raindrops began pattering across the heated hood of his car.

Drive.

Drive.

He pushed the button for the radio and let the static accompany him into the forest.

\---

The rain came in waves, Hurricane Dennis clawing its way up the west of the state and leaving them to deal with it’s arms and fingers of storm weather and neutered mayhem. So it wasn’t the storm to best cover his preparations, he had known that when he first saw its projected path. It didn’t matter.

What mattered most, in that moment at least, was the relatively new AC unit giving up the ghost with a truly horrific grinding noise. Just one more thing to add to the growing unease eating away at Kurapika’s belly. It seemed his recurring thoughts of failure--death or otherwise--were more likely than not. He put an arm over his face and let his jaw clench tight until his teeth hurt.

A cool hand slid up his chest, ice through the still heat. It settled on his throat and made him press his lips tight together as he peered from under his arm. Chrollo smiled at him. He was all messy black hair and dark eyes, the shadows taken the form of a man and set upon him like a blight. His throat felt tight, tighter still as Chrollo moved over him to slide lips across his own, pushing Kurapika’s arms into the pillows above his head. The tongue dipping into his open mouth tasted of brackish water leached through with bitter roots of weeds and worse.

Kurapika pushed against the force holding his arms and found it would give for him, so he wrapped Chrollo in his arms and let the man drown him in a less conventional way than the last time. If that could be considered conventional. If convention was a word applicable to a single aspect of life in this swamp. Even with the cool of Chrollo’s body above him the still air grew stuffy, grew unbearable, and left him too weak to kiss back. He kept his mouth open to be kissed through the fugue.

This was the Hell he’d read about, been told of on signpost and street corner by people he never cared to commit to memory. Chrollo--the destination, not so much the man--was an eternal damnation he’d chosen for himself for the crime of survival. Kurapika was half convinced this man with his chilled silk skin and abyssal eyes might be the devil himself, and if not then at the very least some being born from the very idea of one. Tongue to tongue with eternity, Kurapika bit Chrollo’s lip just to make him dig nails into skin too hot to stay upon the bone.

When his teeth released the thin petal of flesh, he found two at his ear whispering in slow moving air and the twig-snap of saliva that shouldn't even be recorded in sound. A memory had no business being so present, but that was the nature of a trauma wasn’t it? "I know you’re planning something nasty, Kura. You had that sweet boy help you, and when I find out what it is,” nails released skin to grip Kurapika by his hips in order to settle a body heavy over his lap. Kurapika bit his own lip this time and turned his head to the side to hold back a groan. “I'll make you a beautiful scarf out of his entrails."

There was no fadeaway, no flicker of the apparition’s visage, no escape this time. He moved his body to drag boiling need to the surface of Kurapika’s skin to leave him panting on stagnant air. Kurapika lifted his arms enough only to cling to Chrollo’s sides, unsure if he had an ounce of willpower left to push him away, or if it was all sloping down to this on rain-slicked pavement.

Black ice, black eyes, and the undertow between.

\---

The grave was a crude thing. Crumbling brownstone, tiers of stone stacked atop yet larger stone and embellished with a cross. The cross was engraved properly with an almost unreadable collection of letters that left Kurapika squinting quizzically as he crouched before it in the weeds. This must be what Chrollo meant by having his name spelled incorrectly. Below the anglicized nightmare were katakana that seemed to be chipped into the stone by an industrious pocket knife. _‘Kuroro Rushifuru’_. Kurapika mouthed the consonants airlessly; airless, lest he summon the bastard.

From his back pocket he pulled a flask. He opened it, took a swig, and upended it over the grave. It was the whisky his mind (or Chrollo himself) had played tricks on him with weeks before, the vanishing scent of alcohol over the floor. “Libations for the dead and those who should have moved on already. Whatever last rights they gave you weren’t grand enough, it didn’t stick.” A honeybee should have set up her kingdom above the forgotten grave site in order to pour the appropriate offerings into the unnervingly unpacked Myakka and bones below.

The walk back through the woods towards home was as if walking past funhouse mirrors, the fisheye lens of the damned. Seep springs across the ground, gnarled bark around sigils carved an age and a half ago into the trees. Kurapika closed his eyes against the sunlight filtering benign and thin through the canopy. His feet would take him home, or they would take him far enough from it that something equally as uncanny would snatch him up in its jaws and be done with him.

His vision narrowed on brown leaves and pale grey sand, thin sticks, fungi large and small as the heat of the sun sunk into his skin. It warmed the bubble of breath around his face until he felt as though he were breathing over fresh black asphalt. His feet would carry him home, because they must finish what he had begun.

\---

Chrollo’s hat had an interesting property about it, wherein it never ceased dripping. As if freshly plucked from the river, it would seep water into and along any adjacent surfaces. The hat itself was covered in a slick of algae green as greed, but the places it spread its bilge across was subject still to the ailments of water damage. Thus, the hat was surrounded, but not covered in, a film of black mold where it had sat in the corner of the living room. Thus, Kurapika’s fingers began to shrivel and prune as he carried the hat around in one hand, lengths and lengths of chain trailing behind him.

To trap an apparition to the place it haunted, and most notably _no further_ , one had to be proactive about setting boundaries. The chain Kurapika dragged around the perimeter of the house was actually multiple long lengths of chain padlocked together, and he fed it out hand over hand until he came around to the other length looped around the porch banister. Chrollo stood watching him, curious and displeased. “I’m not sure I appreciate all the effort you’re putting into this. Why have you taken my hat?”

“Mine now, actually.”

“Excuse me? I don’t follow.”

Kurapika fit the ends of chain in his armpit as he pulled out a knife and slit open the skullroom of the hat. He ignored the way Chrollo jerked in shock at the sight. “What’s yours is mine. _Mi casa es su casa_.”

Chrollo approached him, anger in his body like the storm glancing past the coast and far less harmless. Danger. Kurapika fit the chain through the hole in the hat, and closed the final padlock through both ends of the available links. With purpose, that was how this worked. With purpose, he closed that padlock, and found his palms welded to the metal with a lack of give that made his gut churn. The sensation of a car driven over a rise then brought down again too soon, eyes closed and unprepared. He looked up at Chrollo with the wild eyes of a hare caught in a snare.

“You…” Chrollo’s mouth hung open as if smacked that way. A useless look crawled across his face only to be pushed back by that now fully formed anger. “You child.”

Hysteria roiled inside of him, a panicked dove in a cage of bloody ribs and gore. Kurapika laughed with the pitch of someone realizing what they’ve done could never be forgiven by any party. “Now you’re mine, and I am yours.”

“Til death, of course, ‘til I rip those ambitious little arms from that body of yours.” Chrollo watched him step over the chain, onto the porch, and finally free his hands from the metal. There was an edge to his eyes Kurapika couldn’t name just yet, couldn’t put his finger on or make out the silhouette of with his tongue braced against clenched teeth. “Why would you do this? Why trap yourself in here with me, what do you intend to gain from it?”

“You shouldn’t ask questions like that, _Kuroro,_ I thought you were a master of extrapolation and other hidden arts.” Laughter pushed through his teeth like steam as Chrollo grabbed his jacket to shove him against the screen door. Tears pricked Kurapika’s eyes and fell hot down his cheeks as _hypoxia_ threatened him with blackened edges and spots in his vision, and all at once he realized what Chrollo reminded him of. The image of a jaguar in a well with only its eyes visible, pointed straight down the sheer cliff of its face to reveal a bared maw. Hunted and stuck.

“Never have I loathed you, not until now. Not loathed, surely, was it love? Is this love, Kura? You have locked me away to spend these final days together. Your heart is mine, my dear, I am going to eat you alive for this.” Chrollo did not offer an ounce of resistance to being pulled into an open mouthed kiss.

If it was possible to swallow the essence of a man’s shadow down like wine, Kurapika had found it.

\---

Kurapika stood before the bookshelf in his home office--one of the bedrooms turned into a study, bed shoved into the next room over and dressers put away behind folding closet doors. The problem was not that there were books on these shelves, as he had placed many here himself upon moving in. No, the problem was that the books on these shelves were not his. Not one of these titles was a novel or textbook he’d carried in his library from one house to the next.

The leather under his fingers was brittle from age as he slid finger pads along the rows of old fashioned bound spines. One of the books felt warmer than the others, and his hand hovered too long over it before he pulled it out, lips parting into a preemptive grimace. He flipped back the cover, and stared impassively down at the bloody apothecary where there should have been pages. Cut half an inch from all sides, the book held the insides of a rat along with the dried blossoms of nearby flowers and burnt ivy.

Must be one of Chrollo’s, although whether it was one of his many old treasures leaking into the present or a new creation, Kurapika wouldn’t waste the energy to ponder.

He closes the book as his eyes slide to the window, taking in the devil himself standing a story below in the yard, looking up. Observing him. How many of these talismans did the man have around his home? What hexes and prayers to the unknown did he gather and spread like dandelion seeds? The mold spore of a dead man. Chrollo’s image wavered with the heat from the sunny window, a mirage with determination.

He watched Chrollo smile, and snapped the book shut.

\---

There was, in some houses, a shrine to drunkenness to be seen on the mantle of the fridge, above the sink, or at times a dedicated shelf over the entertainment center. Some sign of the passage of time through the marks of bottle blue and nickel green, the arches of a decorative vase that once held rum or whisky. Kurapika’s shrine was the rise of strewn bottles between his chair and the coffee table. 

Rain was a memory to them now, replaced by the summer’s breath through every open window the house had to offer. Chrollo stood with his back against the stair rail, head tilted down but his gaze trained on Kurapika’s dilapidation. A man fallen on his own sword. Chrollo’s lip curled when Kurapika’s essential tremor of a laugh returned, hazy eyes focused somewhere through the coffee table. 

“To your health, dear.” He lifted his own glass, his own, from before the extra pieces of this miserable abode were anchored by nail and caulking. Chrollo’s glare might as well have been chips of hail torn directly from the night sky--a muted fury that promised something slow to the point of mythology.

Kurapika leaned his head back, lifted his eyes to the bare boards across the ceiling, and sighed. “Cheers.”

The heat lightening along the rim of the far above clouds was silent but felt, somehow, in the marrow of his bones. Their discontented rumbling sent sparks to the numbed nerves throughout his body. Mist from the river drifted into the house and took Kurapika’s inebriated thoughts back to the water, back to the mouth of the spring, lost stuck somewhere in the weeds. Mist, humidity compressed between the clouds and the water-veins tracing the earth to pieces. It gathered and gathered, but it never dripped.

Dew on spiderwebs. Glass beads on silk threads.

_(Cover art by Endly:<https://endlydraws.tumblr.com/post/622458495321751552/> )_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have one other sad ghost story to finish, but to everyone waiting on 'What Fades In The Sun" please know it is FINALLY time to return to the writing of that fic! I hope this was an enjoyable KrKr story for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing, and to those who don't I thank you for giving this a chance regardless.


End file.
